85 more news portals including Prothom Alo, Daily Star e-papers get approval to register

The information and broadcasting ministry on Thursday granted approval to 85 more online news portals for being registered, reports UNB.

The ministry has published the approvals in two separate orders and asked the portals to complete registration within 20 working days submitting the fees determined by the government.

The online news portals include en.prothomalo.com, Prothom Alo epaper, Daily Star epaper, Sangbad, Independent24, News Today, Khoborpatra, Daily Nawroj online portals.

Of the approved news portals, 62 are online versions of daily newspapers and 23 are online news portals.

Until 29 November 2020, the government approved registration to online portals of 92 daily newspapers and 82 online newspapers.

Applications of 2,000 more online news portals are currently under processing at the ministry.

On 28 September this year, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) started closing unregistered news portals, to implement an order of the High Court, and a few registered ones got closed during the process.

Later the registered news portals were opened and 14 more days were sought from the court to close the unregistered ones.